LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 video game producer Loz Doyle sat down with VideoGamer.com to discuss the upcoming game and the many ways in which this experience will include the many, multifaceted elements of Harry Potter’s world. The interview, which can be read here, covers many subjects including the inclusion of LEGO blocks into the game, the ways in which the Harry Potter characters age throughout the games, and the scale of Hogwarts. On the subject of how the characters age in the game, Doyle relates:

There are quite a lot of outfit changes, but that’s just to match them with the films. They have the casual clothes, they have the Quidditch uniforms, and they have the school uniforms. The main characters stay the same because the mini-figures stay the same. But there’s a bit of a balance, because LEGO has done some more models, so we may use some of the newer models if it makes sense. In film four, Dumbledore has a different outfit than he had in year one, so we would use that. But mostly the characters will stay looking the same because they do in the plastic.

The video game producer goes on to relate, at some length, the Hogwarts castle structure and experience, calling it “big, but what we’ve done is, even though it feels like Hogwarts, we haven’t just recreated Hogwarts exactly as it is in the films.” He continues:

Whereas in a film they can have a location over here, location over here, then they just edit and they arrive at the place, in a game you’ve actually got to travel. So we’ve made it look like Hogwarts and feel like Hogwarts, but we’ve designed it around being able to get around and get to the places you want to go more easily. So, for example, all of the common rooms are off one area, whereas in the film there’s one in the basement, one up in the tower and one over here and one over there. We allude to that by having all four common rooms in one place and then to get to the Slytherin one, which would normally be down nine flights of stairs, you just go through a door, down one set of stairs and you appear in the common room. So while we say, yes, it’s down there, you don’t have to physically do it.

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In year one, while the whole of Hogwarts does exist, you can’t access it. We lock off doors, areas, you can’t go outside right at the beginning. You start in the common room, and even though it feels like you’re in Hogwarts – you see the main hall and you’re like, oh this is huge – you can’t go in very many places. Right at the beginning you can only go and do your first lesson. We guide the player to that first lesson. There’s nowhere else they can go. So despite the fact that they can mess around in a few rooms on the way if they want, there’s no chance of them getting lost because there’s only one place to go. And then after that there’s only another place to go. We gradually open up Hogwarts so the player can get their bearings. As the years progress we open up more and more and more, until year four – when you should know your way around by then – it’s all open; the grounds, the secret rooms.